


The Continuing Debt

by ConstanceComment



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Alternate Universe - Javert Survives, Coming In Pants, Depression, Dirty Talk, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Enthusiastic Consent, Implied/Referenced Suicide attempt, Introspection, Loud Sex, M/M, Middle Aged Virgins, Not A Fix-It, Oral Sex, Porn with Feelings, Theology, Unresolved Romantic Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-07
Updated: 2015-08-07
Packaged: 2018-04-12 17:34:50
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,891
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4488522
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ConstanceComment/pseuds/ConstanceComment
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>Would you like, do you want.</i> As if Javert ever wanted anything in his life that wasn’t <i>Justice</i> or <i>Order</i> or <i>a warmer coat</i>. Even now it’s easier to frame things by what he doesn’t want; to be a bother, to take up space, to be shackled to this house.</p><p>Though that last is something of a half-truth, one that makes Javert’s teeth grind. It is not, necessarily, that he <i>wants</i> to be anywhere but here, in Valjean’s kitchen, while the man makes tea for him. It is not, particularly, as if Javert has grand plans to escape. It is not even that he thinks of himself, that much, as trapped. It is only— Valjean’s house is cool in this endless summer, and Javert has nowhere else to go.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Continuing Debt

**Author's Note:**

  * For [carnival_papers](https://archiveofourown.org/users/carnival_papers/gifts).



> “I have gazed into the abyss, and the abyss was full of dicks.” — Javert, at some point, probably.
> 
> Hope you enjoy, carnival_papers; this didn't hit all your prompts, but I think I did manage to get five of them. Thank you so much for helping to run the exxxchange. Thanks also to Vaincs, who helped me find my chill when I was panicking about mugs, and who was the pornathon's other mod, and inciting incident.
> 
> Check the notes at the end for the full list of possible triggers.

“Would you like tea?” Valjean asks, coming in from the garden. “I’d thought to make some for myself, and as long as the water is boiling—”

Here is the thing that has been plaguing Javert for days, now: _would you like, do you want._ As if Javert ever wanted anything in his life that wasn’t _Justice_ or _Order_ or _a warmer coat._

“If it’s no trouble for you,” Javert hedges.

Even now it’s easier to frame things by what he doesn’t want; to be a bother, to take up space, to be shackled to this house.

Though that last is something of a half-truth, one that makes Javert’s teeth grind. It is not, necessarily, that he _wants_ to be anywhere but here, in Valjean’s kitchen, while the man makes tea for him. It is not, particularly, as if Javert has grand plans to escape. It is not even that he thinks of himself, that much, as trapped. It is only— Valjean’s house is cool in this endless summer, and Javert has nowhere else to go.

* * *

Javert has been spending all his days in this house, since June. Not that June was very long ago— it is only just August, now, and July was a swelter of heat that Javert barely remembers through the haze of his fever, melancholy, and general confusion.

This August is hot all the same. The temperature and humidity drive Javert indoors. The house is cool and dark, and quiet lives in the rooms with him. Lethargy is Javert’s constant companion, for all that he does not sleep, dragging at his limbs, pulling at his head to put a bend to bend his stiff neck.

Valjean, by comparison, spends all his time out of doors. The garden is his place, the earth exerting some compelling dominion over him that Javert cannot understand. Sweat sticks his clothes to him, dark skin apparent under the shirts that start each morning so crisp and clean. Inches of Valjean are revealed, through the day. He bends, and the hem rides up in bunches until it comes untucked from his trousers. He digs, and rolls his sleeves up to try and keep them cleaner, or at least out of the worst of the dirt.

Valjean seems so at ease, under the sun. Javert cannot remember a time when he ever saw him comfortably do anything, or comfortably be anywhere. Not as the mayor, and certainly not in prison. At the Barricades— assured, but nervous. Back straight, but given away by the shake in his arms until his hand was steady on that pistol.

“You know where to find me,” Valjean had said, or something like it, listed an address. The exact words were lost in the sound of a bullet hitting a wall somewhere behind him; Javert had found himself staring Valjean’s lips to try and divine some clear picture of the details, but had been unmoored.

Javert hears the echo of that gunshot in the strangest places, now. From a window on the second story, he will watch Valjean work the land, and can almost feel the rope around his neck pulling him forward.

* * *

Depression still touches Javert, from time to time. He will sit in the library that was, apparently, once the bastion of Cosette’s childhood, and through a window he will watch the light move outside the house, and lose hours to the people he can only know he has wronged, now, over a lifetime of misservice.

Valjean, too, has been quiet, these days. Though Javert is beginning to think that Valjean has been quiet through all of his days— the mayor was never particularly inclined to talk to the inspector, nor the convict to the guard, though Javert allows the distinct and likely possibility that the common variable in those equations is his own presence, and that Valjean in all his forms is simply disinclined to talk to Javert.

This is reasonable. No one, after all, likes to be faced with a living reminder of how close they live to the edge of the pit.

The correct thing to do, surely, would be to give Valjean the space he likely has always craved. To leave this house, and walk somewhere, anywhere. But there is no path, he suspects, that his feet would not lead to a river should it be Javert’s feet on them, now.

Javert cannot bring himself to leave. From the moment he requested Javert’s execution for his own to the moment he pulled him from the river, Valjean had to have known what it was he was purchasing. Surely there are only so many times that you can hold a man’s life in your hands before you realize that you own it.

* * *

Tied to the house, Javert watches Valjean in glimpses. The way he holds in on himself, and remains on the property, shying away from the thought of visiting his daughter like a horse from a river in flood, agonizing over her letters and sparse invitations to dinner. That same nervousness from the alleyway lives in his body in the way that he never looks directly at Javert, the fine tremor that takes his hands at odd moments. Valjean eats little, and works often in the heat, something elemental to him driven by the garden, that belongs entirely to the earth.

Javert thinks, sometimes, when he wakes in the morning from his place in the small guest room, that it is only one another’s presence that is stopping them from quietly wasting away. Considering what Javert had already tried, there is perhaps an irony to be appreciated in the situation.

* * *

Javert does not sleep at night, anymore. At least, not frequently, or well. Sleep eludes him during the unlit hours, and often he lies awake at night until the sun rises, only to find himself asleep between noon and evening, his spent body finding unconsciousness on any flat surface it can find.

Commanded by the cycles of the earth, Valjean retires early each evening. He prays regularly, and often, if he strains, Javert will hear him through the wall of the guest bedroom in which he has been staying. Most nights, Valjean’s prayers are private, quiet. What Javert hears through the wall is the impression of faith, piety that seeps through the house and weights the world like an anchor.

Javert remembers that same sense of weight, of faith, from the depths of his fever. Words were mostly lost to his sickness, the injuries he received in his fall from the bridge infected by the river below it. But the tone that Valjean uses when he speaks to God is something reverent that Javert has rarely encountered. Hope that painful, that real, is all the more so by the belief that Valjean pours into it. The sadness that laces through.

In July, Valjean had recited, and the words had been clearer, carried through the wall with grace and frightening earnestness. There was mention of beast, and fish, and the creation of the world, which Javert supposed placed the passage somewhere in Genesis. But what stood out to him, and kept him awake for hours after, was Valjean’s voice reciting:

“It is not good that man should be alone.”

* * *

There is no way for Javert to make up for the lifetime he has put into question. He has no way of grappling with the enormity of his mistakes, even now. He cannot see the beginning or end of it, no place where his failures are not startlingly apparent in the harsh light of new knowledge.

The abyss yawns open for him, inexorable and wide. His failures weigh him down like uncountable stones. It feels, sometimes, as if Javert never left the river at all, that every breath is taken through a filter of murky water.

Valjean tethers him to the world, in his own way. Javert still does not understand why Valjean pulled him from the river. His memory of the event itself is fragmented, though the pieces he can hold onto burn with clarity.

The wide-eyed expression Valjean was wearing, in the moment before gravity’s demand asserted itself, as time seemed to pause in the scramble between forces— that is one of the few things Javert has, and it is one he cannot even begin to make sense of.

What he does know, is that Valjean saved him. Pity, Christian duty; Javert isn’t sure what the cause is, entirely. The best he can do is guess at motives, and the practice is new to him, something he never cared to try before.

In any case, Javert has no business thinking of Valjean the way that finds himself doing more and more often. There was a night when they sat too close and Javert could feel the heat from Valjean’s skin while they sat on the porch that looks out over the garden, night falling and cooling the world. Javert said something, then, wry and apparently amusing, and Valjean laughed, head tilted back as he shook his head, closed eyes momentarily skyward.

Javert watched his throat move, his own suddenly, horribly tight and dry. He could not imagine a single time where he ever seen Valjean laugh. He wanted— Javert is still not sure, what it is that he wants, other than closeness. Other than more of that moment, himself out of the stifling house and Valjean out of the ownership of his garden, a meeting in that strange in-between of an evening spent on the porch.

It feels inappropriate, to want. Or at least, Javert assumes that it must be— he has never wanted, before. At least, he has never wanted like this, before.

Javert is not entirely unfamiliar with lust. He has known it, in passing. In shameful moments where Valjean’s strength (for it always was, in the end, Valjean’s strength, or grace, or simply the working of his hands, that struck Javert with something that felt uncomfortably like need until ruthlessly he ignored it) heated him in a way different from summer, or from fever. Whatever it is that grips Javert now, it is not lust. Not wholly. There is some other dimension to it than the perversion of social order for the sake of his own fantasy, or the desires of his aging body.

What drives Javert now is barely a drive at all. It does not compel him, not with force or insistence. It creeps upon him in strange moments, when light from a candle or a lantern touches Valjean and makes the lines in his face soft, or when he hears Valjean pray at night, and thinks that this is what must be holy, to the sinners like him that never paid any heed to God.

Javert has never wanted anything in his life, nothing that could be substantial and real all at the same time. But he wants this. Whatever it is, he does not have the words for it. Inside his chest, his heart is still learning what it means to be living wood instead of dead, and yet he still feels hollowed out, having lost his purpose in the moment that withered organ tried once again to beat.

Javert never had the need to be introspective, before, and is ill equipped now to spend the time that passes through him now. He knows so little, he finds. What he thought he know about the workings of men was wrong. What he thought he knew about Valjean was wrong. And as for himself, what he had known about himself remained true, after Valjean turned him loose. It was only that the light which shined upon him had changed, moving from a single point to fullness. Unyielding, unflinching, unwavering Javert, hardened to the lies of the poor and the outcast, a perfect instrument of authority.

Having lived a life so meticulously free of indulgence or corruption, his sin was pride, in the end. And the answer had been, of course, to humble himself. To remand himself to the authority he had unwittingly betrayed.

Valjean asked him in June, during Javert’s post-Seine fever, what it was that had driven Javert to the bridge.

“How else,” Javert remembers answering, “does one resign their commission to God?”

“God does not seek your life in compensation for your error,” Valjean told him, some shaking quality in the words.

“But I have made so many,” Javert protested, fever dragging him back towards the dark, “and they say that God’s justice is absolute, and his judgment clear.”

Twice, now, Valjean has interfered with Javert’s resignation, and each time Javert cannot help but resent it.

Whatever it is that Javert wants from him, it is not lust, nor salvation. If there is a word at all, Javert is beginning to suspect it is one like _mercy_ , which he had heard only from the lips of others, and whose meaning he had forgotten.

* * *

Last week, long after his fever had broken, Javert swore he could feel it again, roiling underneath his skin. A heat altogether different than the one that kept him sedentary and inside suddenly drove him from the house, late at night. He escaped out into the garden, and laid on the ground and shut his eyes against the light of the stars. He swore he could feel the earth spinning below him, ground moving as he suffered the aftershocks of some great quake that originated in the soul.

There must have been some moment where Javert made a sound. That he created some sign whereby Valjean could sense his distress, though Javert doesn't remember doing so. But he felt someone move into his space even though he had not heard the porch door open.

“Are you alright?” Valjean asked.

 _‘No,’_ Javert thought, the word distinct within him. Of course, Javert did not give voice to it.

“The stars are constant,” is what he said instead. “I had always admired that. They move with the seasons, in orderly constellations, and return every night, every year.”

Behind him, he heard Valjean move, the wooden porch creaking under his weight and the uneven stride of his limp, the damp summer grass parting for his feet.

“It was man who made the constellations,” Javert continued. “Just as it was man who made the laws.”

Somewhere to his left, Valjean shuffled, and Javert heard him sit, stretching himself out in the grass. Carefully, with a gentleness that was new and startling, fingers brushed Javert’s open palm. At his instinctive twitch towards them, those fingers reached, and twined between his, Valjean’s leathered hand warm and rough and broad.

“I have followed all the wrong things,” Javert said, and clung to Valjean’s hand like a lifeline while the earth spun relentlessly beneath him.

* * *

Here, now, in Valjean’s kitchen at the last month of an endless summer, Javert holds a mug of tea instead of Valjean’s hand. Javert watches the man work in the kitchen, washing the dirt from his fingers and arms before he turns to the cupboards over the stove to start preparing the night’s meal.

Valjean used to have a portress, here. Someone to do the work of the cooking and the cleaning, to maintain the property, but that must have been before June, before this place had been made his default residence by a distinct lack of anywhere else to go. Without her help, Valjean makes each meal himself.

The two of them do not spend their days together. With the close-quarters encompassed in a house, one would think they’d almost be forced to, but they are recluses, the both of them. Shared meals almost feels enforced, by politeness or some last ditch effort to play by the rules of social convention. More and more, Javert has not found himself regretting them.

Valjean is not at ease, here, but the garden’s settling air clings to him, still. His back is still straight, his limp there, but not yet entirely pronounced. Javert can see Valjean pulling his guard back up, in his presence. If there was any doubt that it was Javert who made him uncomfortable, it is dispelled by watching Valjean hide himself, trying once again to fold some part of himself in.

Javert stands from his chair, the wooden legs scraping across the floor.

Valjean turns to look at him in surprise, eyes widening slightly.

“May I help?” Javert asks, and wordlessly, Valjean steps to the side, gesturing to the stove.

Rolling his sleeves up to his elbows, Javert takes his place at the sink to wash his hands. Then, taking the striker from a drawer, he bends to the stove and opens it, lighting the tinder inside. Close by, Valjean pulls ingredients from the icebox, and washes tomatoes that Javert is nearly certain had been grown in Valjean’s own garden.

With the stove lit, the preparations for dinner are easy enough. Valjean prepares the vegetables and the sauce while Javert handles the meat. Javert tries to give Valjean the space that he needs, but there are only so many places he can stand and still have access to the stove. When Valjean steps in to add spices to the sauce, his elbow brushes Javert’s forearm.

The room smells of cooking chicken, woodsmoke, and herbs. On his left, Valjean is lit through the window and the porch door, the setting sun softening the lines of his face. Warmth burns inside Javert when Valjean smiles at him, thanking him for his help with preparation.

“It was no trouble,” Javert replies, and sets the table while Valjean plates the food.

“Still,” Valjean says, and his smile does not fade, “thank you, all the same.”

* * *

Here is what Javert remembers from the river: the water was cold, and hitting the surface broke more than one of his ribs along his right side. The passage of time was already blurred, by then, but it cannot have been long before Javert heard a second splash.

Then, his head had dropped below the surface, and there had been an eternity of silence, and starlight as seen through waves.

Javert remembers a hand reaching for him the same as had lunged, futilely through the air as gravity took hold of him, just narrowly missing his hand.

When he next became aware again, Javert was surprised to find he was alive.

“Give to everyone what you owe them:” a voice said. “If you owe taxes, pay taxes; if revenue, then revenue; if respect, then respect; if honor, then honor.”

It took him a while, once more clear-headed, for Javert to understand that the desperate speaker had been Valjean.

* * *

When the time comes to wash up after dinner, Javert lingers. Usually, he flees after meals, uncomfortable in his status as a guest, unsure of what protocol, if any, should be followed. Tonight, he stays. Helpfulness is better than hiding. Valjean should not, in his own home, have to labor alone, or think Javert ungrateful.

Valjean seems as startled by this offer as the last, but acquiesces, drying while Javert washes.

How close are they supposed to stand, to do this? Domestic tasks should not feel so intimate as this does, with limbs brushing in the quiet, the sun now fully set on the warm August evening. The warmth from before is settled in Javert, now, banked and liquid, something that he knows will follow him when this fleeting moment passes.

Valjean is, at most, a hand’s breadth from Javert. He can feel the heat from Valjean’s skin, like this. When he hands Valjean a glass, a plate, the silverware, their fingers brush. With Javert’s hands wet like this, and Valjean dry, it cannot be pleasant, but Valjean stays close regardless.

At one point, Javert misjudges distance, and his hand skates up past Valjean’s wrist when he blindly tries to hand him a fork. Valjean shivers under his touch, and Javert pulls back as if burned, dropping the fork.

“Here,” Valjean says, reaching for the fork, “let me—”

When Valjean turns to face him, they are still too close together, and Valjean’s turn only made them closer so. Javert blinks, and they are nose to nose, now. He can feel Valjean’s breath on his skin.

Something flickers in Valjean’s dark eyes, tentative and fleeting, gone before Javert can even try to identify it.

The next thing that Javert is able to register, Valjean is pressing a kiss to his lips.

 _‘Oh,’_ Javert thinks, and, clumsily, kisses him back.

“Please tell me if I am wrong,” Valjean says suddenly, urgently.

“You are not wrong,” Javert assures him. “I had not thought—” He shakes his head. “I had thought I was alone, in this.”

“You are not alone,” Valjean replies. “If you will let me, I would hope that neither of us would have to be alone again.”

This time, when Javert kisses him, he does so slowly. He breathes deeply, pressing his forehead down against Valjean’s. Valjean smells of sweat, and dirt, and basil from the garden, and the hands he is slowly snaking around Javert’s waist are warm, and dry.

“I was so afraid,” Valjean admits, “when I saw you leave the house. I was terrified on the bridge, I could not fathom a world without you in it.”

“I had thought you would have been relieved,” Javert says in turn. “To see your tormentor gone, the last living man that knew your name.”

The hands on Javert’s waist tighten, at these words. “‘The only living man,’” Valjean repeats. “The only living man who knew my name; I did not want you dead, Javert. I do not think— I cannot know, if this was what drove me to follow you to the Seine. I cannot know if I would have done this for any man. But I did for you, and I knew then that I could not have done otherwise.”

“I wanted you to be free,” Javert says, pressing another kiss to the corner of Valjean’s now unsmiling mouth. “There were so many wrongs I was trying to right, then, but foremost, I wanted you to be free.”

“I the price of my freedom is the death of another man, I want nothing to do with it,” Valjean replies fiercely, and the kiss he gives to Javert is all teeth, and perhaps the first demand that Valjean has made on him this summer.

“I know that,” Javert says, when Valjean pulls back. “It is the greatest thing about you, your charity, I know that—”

Javert shakes his head, to clear it, and steps back from Valjean, as much as the hands around his waist will allow him to do so.

“I want you to be selfish,” Javert says, and takes Valjean’s hands off his waist, and pulls him towards the bedrooms, leaving the washing behind.

* * *

Valjean’s bedroom is spartan. A bed, a window, a dresser, a table, a fireplace. The two lit, silver candlesticks on the mantle are the most ostentatious things about the room, out of character to what Javert has come to know of him.

Javert has never been in a position to take clothes off of another person before, but it proves no greater challenge than removing them from himself. Valjean is quick to aide him as Javert strips him out of his clothes, pulling his shirt over his head once Javert has undone the buttons all along his front.

The expanse of skin that opens up before him is a vision, shining with sweat in the light from the candlesticks. Javert bends forwards, and backs Valjean towards the bed as his shirt drops to the floor. Valjean’s knees hit the edge of the bed, and he folds, sitting heavily and making the bed creak.

Javert is left standing, like this, but barely, pushed forwards into Valjean’s space by gravity and leverage. He allows himself to fall the rest of the way, until he is propped up against Valjean entirely.

“Are you sure?” Valjean asks him. His hands flutter at his sides, as if Valjean is unsure of where to put them.

“I am,” Javert replies. “I would like to— I want—” Javert stops. “I want,” he says simply, and hopes that is enough.

In the time since Javert’s recovery, and their subsequent hermitage, both he and Valjean have taken to avoiding shoes. It is easier, in this heat, to walk around the house without them on, and if Valjean has a problem with dirt between his toes when he walks through the garden, he has never complained of it to Javert. Javert has never been particularly thankful for that habit, but now he finds his gratitude in abundance as the lack of boots to unlace makes removing Valjean’s trousers an easier task than it otherwise could have been.

The front of Valjean’s undergarments are damp, his cock presses outwards against their confinement. With haste, Javert kneels down and pulls it free, and Valjean makes a sound as Javert reaches down to touch him, wrapping a hand around Valjean’s shaft. There’s a weight to him that Javert can appreciate, thick and solid.

“May I?” Javert asks, and waits for a nod from Valjean before he licks the head of his cock.

Javert seals his mouth around the head of Valjean’s dick and moves his tongue across the head and shaft. Valjean tastes of sweat and salt, the scents of the garden not clinging to him here in this most intimate place.

Slowly, Javert takes more of Valjean in, stretching his jaw wide, pressing Valjean’s hips down with his hands for better leverage.

Further up along the bed, Valjean makes a muffled sound, causing Javert to pull away from his dick and look up; Valjean has a hand pressed against his mouth, teeth just barely showing against the side of his clenched fist.

“You can be loud, you know,” Javert says idly, nosing up along the seam between Valjean’s leg and his crotch, hands roaming down to Valjean’s legs. “You can react. There’s no one here who’s going to be disturbed by it, that would judge you for it.”

Under his hands, Valjean’s thighs flex, jumping in his grip. Javert wonders if it is from his words, from the teasing of his touch—

“I’m getting better,” Javert says, “at taking whatever you would wish to give,” and bites quickly, the juncture of flesh he has pinned open, pressing his teeth into the cords of muscle just to feel them work.

Valjean shouts, and bucks with his whole body, the bed shaking with his exertion. Javert is thrown a little, by the force, something wild and anticipatory taking notice within him at the demonstration of that power.

Sitting up, Valjean reaches down to put his hands on Javert’s forearms where they’re draped across Valjean’s legs.“Are you alright?” He asks Javert, voice hoarse from the shout Javert had won from him.

“I’m fine,” Javert replies, and his jaw hurts, still, from the weight of Valjean in his mouth, the way he had been forced to stretch himself open to receive him.

Maybe it _is_ about what Javert wants, after all this work. What he _wants_ is to see Valjean fall apart. Is to see him be loud, and realized, and in his own skin for once instead of somebody else’s. Javert has been trying to get a clear picture of him for as many days now as the years that he’d spent thinking of Valjean only as an object without dimensions. Valjean, without his clothes, without his walls or his wits— that’s what Javert wants.

That what he wants is something that he thinks Valjean needs is wonderful, then, something that touches his spine with the same frisson of miracle that he feels half the times Valjean looks at him, some of the moments when their hands brush and Valjean doesn’t pull his away.

Valjean is looking down at him right now with a concern that is, finally, not pity, not duty. Javert wanted honesty in better circumstances, and this is it.

“What do you want?” Javert asks him. “Without thinking, what do you want?”

“I want—” Valjean’s hands tighten on Javert’s forearms, squeezing before he opens his palms, moves in aborted, half-soothing motions as if to wipe away some hurt. “I want your hands,” Valjean blurts.

Javert smiles, and it feels— it feels like it always feels; predatory, satisfied. Some cast that he’d always thought must be ugly, to decent men, before he could not help but give it out in answer to every instance of Valjean’s kinder version of the expression.

“That can be arranged,” Javert says. “Here,” he begins, and slides up Valjean’s body, revelling in the press of skin.

Valjean’s grip on his forearms slackens as Javert moves, allowing Javert to bring a hand to Valjean’s chest, pushing him flat against the bed. Javert explorers with his hands and his eyes. Scars stand out to him, lighter against his dark skin, signs of pain that despite their having faded from age, still make Javert’s chest constrict. If Valjean were to turn over, he knows that he would see the lashes from Toulon, and have to know that he himself had laid at least a few of them, even as the number of their counting escapes him.

On his chest alone there is his prison brand, numbers stark, and familiar.

Javert has done wrong by uncountable people, by this point in his life. And while atonement may be out of his reach for the majority of them, the least he can do is keep his guilt from tainting this moment now.

Bypassing the brand entirely, Javert turns his attention to Valjean’s nipples. Carefully, he rolls them in his fingers, twisting this way and that, feeling them grow stiff. On the bed, Valjean arches into his touch despite trying not to, squirming at Javert’s actions.

“You want this,” Javert marvels, bending forward to press a kiss to Valjean’s sternum.

“Yes,” Valjean manages, “please—”

“I have you,” Javert says, and runs a hand down Valjean’s side in what he hopes is a reassuring gesture. “Hold on, let me—”

Carefully, Javert brings his hand to Valjean’s dick, still wet from Javert’s mouth. He wraps his hand around the base, thumb pressed against the head as he starts to slowly rub, before twisting his hand and jerking Valjean quickly. Precum wells up from his slit, and Javert smears it around the head with his thumb.

“Look at you,” Javert marvels. “How could anyone look at you, and not want this? Not think of this—” he twists his wrist sharply, drawing a small shout from Valjean. “Not think of having you just like this, spread out, waiting—”

The sound that Valjean makes when Javert pinches a nipple as he pulls at Valjean’s cock is gratifying in a way that makes Javert’s own cock ache in the confines of his trousers. Javert rocks in his own clothes, pressed against the foot of the bed between Valjean’s knees. The friction is at once not enough and too much; he feels trapped in his clothes, but the idea of taking his hands off of Valjean for any amount of time seems completely unreasonable.

This is not about what Javert wants (and he wants, he does, he knows that there is a living heart in his chest that _wants_ ) right now.

“Please Javert,” Valjean begs as his hands slow, and the words choke off in something that is almost a sob when Javert removes his hand from Valjean’s cock.

“I have you,” Javert hushes him, “can you hold still for me? Let me, just let me—”

Bending forward, Javert puts his mouth back on Valjean’s cock, and Valjean’s answering moan is a strung out near-whine of pleasure as Javert takes his hand off Valjean’s nipple as well.

Javert runs a soothing hand along Valjean’s flank before he hums around his cock, then he wraps one hand around the length of shaft he cannot quite fit in his mouth, his other hand going to cup Valjean’s balls, rolling them in his fingers.

Without his arms free to hold Valjean down, Javert has no choice but to let Valjean fuck his face. All that admirable, iron self-control must have vanished the moment sex entered into the equation, or considering the kiss in the kitchen, it may just be Javert who draws these reactions from him. Whatever the reason, Valjean thrusts up, causing Javert to gag and pull off.

“Are you alright,” Valjean grinds out, trying to lift himself from the bed.

Taking a hand from Valjean’s balls, Javert pushes him back down again. “This isn’t about me,” he tells Valjean, and marvels at the sound of his own voice, hoarse and destroyed, clear evidence of what he’s spent the night doing.

“I wonder,” Javert muses aloud, following a train of thought as he continues to run his hand along Valjean’s spit-soaked shaft, “how long we could do this until you lost control entirely. Until it didn’t matter that you were choking me, that you could be hurting me—”

“I need—” Valjean pleads brokenly, and Javert indulges him, entranced by the bliss that this moment is, Valjean spread out and begging for things that only Javert can provide.

It is to this realization that Javert comes, blindsided by his own orgasm as he rocks against the side of the bed, the friction of his sweat and precum stained trousers all the more unbearable once he spills into them.

Javert pulls Valjean’s cock back into his mouth, and rubs at the skin behind his balls. He leans himself forward, a sense of adventure creeping over Javert as he presses himself down on Valjean’s cock, as far as he can go without hurting himself, or feeling ill. He bobs his head as he works his hands, feeling Valjean’s legs shake on either side of him, trembling against the edge of the bed.

When Valjean comes, there is no warning. Javert pulls back to avoid choking, and still comes up coughing, sputtering on the seed that Valjean gets all over his face.

“Come here,” Valjean gasps, sitting up as Javert gets off of his knees. “Let me— we never even got your clothes off,” Valjean realizes, blinking.

“There is no need,” Javert says, but does not protest as Valjean stands on unsteady, peeling Javert’s shirt from him.

“Of course there is need,” Valjean mutters. “After you take such care of me, and then ignore it in yourself—”

“Well, it is just that I already—”

“Oh,” Valjean says, hands finally reaching the waistline of Javert’s pants as he goes to remove them, eyes tracking even farther down to stare at his crotch. “Did it please you, that much—”

“Yes,” Javert says quickly. “Yes, I do not—” He pauses, and smiles, helplessly, mouth twitching at Valjean’s concerned, vaguely thwarted expression.

“It is enough to have my hands on you,” Javert says. “That, and some friction.”

“Get into the bed,” Valjean says to him, and pulls Javert by the bare arms after him, not leaving much room to argue the point.

Valjean backs himself against the bed once more, falling backwards until he is propped against the headboard this time, instead of splayed out against the foot. Once on the bed, Valjean’s hands drop from his arms, and almost by instinct move themselves, one to his hip, the other to a shoulder, as if trying to close any distance left between them. Javert allows himself to be pulled, leans forward until Valjean has him folded so that his back is bowed, their necks slotting into one another.

“I think,” Valjean says quietly, words nearly lost in the way he presses them into the hair behind Javert’s ear and the reverence of his tone, “that I have wanted this for a long time.”

Even softer, he adds: “I am glad to have it, now.”

“I am glad,” Javert replies, “that you want at all, and know that you have me, for as long as you care.”

Above him, Valjean laughs a little, the sound worn and startled and wet. “Then we will be here for an age, I fear.”

“We’ll find something else to do, eventually,” Javert supposes. “Or hunger will drive us from the bed, at some point. But we can always return.”

The silence that stretches between them is soft, unwary. Valjean relaxes underneath him, content, it seems, to simply hold Javert, grip loose and possessive.

“I have wanted this for too long,” Valjean says, eventually. “My senses tell me this is real, and my heart aches with light, but I can hardly believe.”

“That I am here?” Javert asks.

Valjean shakes his head minutely, the gesture pulling at his curls. “That we are are here,” Valjean corrects him. “I had thought something about this act unholy, for so long.”

“Do you still?”

“How could I?” Valjean replies, almost helplessly, his grip tightening around Javert’s back and hip. “This is holy,” Valjean says quietly, wonder in his voice. “How could this be anything but holy, that we are here? I had just never thought—” Valjean cuts himself off, pauses.

Leaning back in Valjean’s hold, Javert looks at him. “What?” He asks.

“I had never thought that I could be worthy of love like this,” Valjean says softly, and something within Javert realigns itself, his wooden heart beating steadily despite itself.

 _‘Oh,’_ Javert thinks, _‘so this is love.’_

“If you are not worthy,” Javert replies, and if the wonder that he feels can be heard in his voice, he has no way to guard against it now, “if you are not worthy, then no man is worthy. And if you are not, then certainly I am not either. But I would like to be selfish,” Javert says. “You should be, as well. I cannot imagine—”

Javert swallows, and works his jaw around the ache that is still there, forces the words out from under the emotion that blocks them. “If God punishes the wicked,” he says, “then I cannot imagine that he would too punish the righteous. Whatever you have done,” Javert says to Valjean, “I am sure, now, that God must have forgiven you. You are the most righteous man that I have ever met, through an effort whose edges I can only scarcely see the edges of. Yet good shines from you like light—”

Javert does not finish the sentence, as he finds his mouth occupied as Valjean leans up to kiss him.

“I do not think you know how long I have waited to hear you say that,” Valjean tells him, and his eyes are crinkled at the corners in a smile, even as they are wet with tears.

* * *

What changes, in the days that follow that night, are the details of a life, and not its facts.

Javert still lives in Valjean’s house, and neither of them leave it for long periods of time. Valjean still hesitates to write to his daughter, and the idea of walking anywhere without Valjean sends dull terror through Javert at the thought of his feet finding an edge. The garden owns Valjean, the same as God does, while Javert hids in Cosette’s library, and sticks to the confines of the house.

“Is there anything in particular that you like to read?” Valjean asks him one day over lunch.

“Well,” Javert says, frowning, “to be honest, there is nothing, really.”

“That you like to read? But you spend all your time in the library! Something in the collection must be occupying your time.”

“It is rather that I don’t like to read, at all,” Javert explains.

“Why not?” Valjean asks.

“I find it tedious,” Javert replies. “But I cannot imagine that I would mind half so much, if someone were to read to me.”

“Would anyone be able to read to you, to alleviate your boredom?” Valjean smiles at him.

Javert felt his lip curving up in answer, helpless to the drive to make Valjean happy, to respond to his quiet joy. “Only you, I imagine,” he says, and is rewarded with a squeeze of his hand, Valjean’s foot brushing up against his leg beneath the kitchen table.

* * *

That afternoon, Valjean follows Javert into the library for the first time that summer.

Valjean stands still in the doorway while Javert explores the shelves, and through a window, watches light move outside the house.

“I know nothing about literature,” Javert complains, pulling Valjean from his melancholy. “There is a large selection, here; you will have to help me look through it.”

Reluctantly, Valjean moves close. Javert leans against him, because he can do so, because he is allowed, because he wants to.

“I was saving these, for Cosette,” Valjean says. “In case she sent for them, from the baron’s estate.”

“Mm,” Javert acknowledges, and puts his right hand in Valjean’s hand, before reaching for a book with h his left. “How about this one?”

“I’ve never read it before,” Valjean says.

“Together, then.”

* * *

That night, the two of them sit on the porch with a lantern, Valjean in a chair, Javert sprawled out on the grass. The air is warm, but cooling, and the wind is low, rolling slowly through the garden.

Valjean’s words wash over him in waves, and if they are not happy all the time, well. Javert is beginning to think that life, lived correctly, is never one thing at all times. It simply is, and it is slow.

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings: A panic attack; suicidal ideation in vague passing, but at multiple points; depression, serving as the background radiation to pretty much this entire story; suicide is also discussed throughout more explicitly. Please practice self care accordingly, and let me know if this list of warnings is not thorough enough.
> 
> This is almost certainly anachronistic. At the point where I started second-guessing whether or not stoves, matches, and mugs existed, and if so in what capacity, I decided it was probably time to call it quits and just post this thing. I'm too ace to write porn. I end up obsessing about the feelings and the historical accuracy. That said, I did enjoy doing this, and the griping is all in sport. Happy reveal day, you guys.
> 
> The title comes from the New International Version translation of Romans 13, specifically line 8: _"Let no debt remain outstanding, except the continuing debt to love one another, for whoever loves others has fulfilled the law."_ Romans 13 is the same passage that Valjean is reading out of when Javert wakes up for the first time after the river, specifically line 7.
> 
> The passage Valjean quotes and keeps Javert up at night is straight out of Genesis 2 (specifically line 18) and is usually read at weddings because I'm as subtle as a brick through a window with a note tied to it.
> 
> [Romans 12](https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Romans%2012&version=NIV) and [Romans 13](https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Romans%2013&version=NIV) are important to this fic and you should probably go check them out. They're very Valjean and Javert passages, as well as Valjean-and-Javert passages. 12 is more Valjean, 13 more Javert, but that's just me.
> 
> This has been the latest and to-date most explicit installment of: forgive me lord, that I use Sunday school knowledge to be the conceptual backbone of my porn.


End file.
